It looks like we've had our last cold snap, so I was moving some of my seedlings out to the cold frame for hardening off. I planned to transplant some of my early tomatoes into larger pots, and I set them on the potting table as I carried the others out back to the cold frame.
As we came back from the back yard, we being the Puppies O'Thunder and me, we startled a large black and white Tom that insists on courting my 16 year old, spayed-for-fifteen-years, cat. He dashed under the car, then scrambled across the potting table and over the fence. I could only watch in horror as he kicked the tray with my early tomatoes in it off the table, and it landed upside down on the ground.
Almost all the seedlings are broken just above the soil line. Out of twenty four early tomatoes, I know have six, and one of those might not make it. I buried the damaged part of the stem, but it was droopy this morning.
Two and a half months of tending and scheming and delighting in even tiny increments of growth, and it's almost all gone in the blink of an eye. Oh, it's not really the cat's fault, he's just doing what cats do; but if I could find the owner that allows an unneutered cat to roam free, I'd throttle them.
Penelope